CHERISH (34 page)
“I want your fingers inside me Daddy . . .” She cocked her head lower, whispering in that babygirl voice that made me want to lose my shit.
Her hips shifted again, and I knew I had her. She couldn’t pretend with me, and I couldn’t with her. There were no hard edges between us, it was lightning bolt energy, like invisible fibers had sewn us together somewhere along the line.
My only frustration was her own lack of confidence in herself, but, like I said, the fucks that raised her had done that, and it was going to be my job to undo it.
Taking another quick look out at the trash trio, I took my middle finger and followed the hot, wet folds down until I felt that heavenly spot that pressed inside her innocent body. If I didn’t have my fingers moving inside my precious angel, I would have been filled with rage watching those fucks out there making assholes of themselves, but lucky for me, my baby was here and at least part of me was inside her.
She was purring next to me and I felt my cock pushing painfully up against the waist of my pants. It took a special part of my brain, something deep inside from my SEAL training to give me the discipline I needed to not ravage her right here and now.
I pressed inside, just beyond my first knuckle, letting the clutches of her virgin walls tense around my finger. Her flow didn’t waste any time starting to gush as I palmed her open slit, grinding against her engorged nub, back and forth, slipping in just far enough to tease her and give her a little jolt as I toyed with that special spot just inside.
Never had I dreamed I could actually have this ravenous feeling of possession and protection over a girl. I’d been with Trixie on and off since high school, but I’d fucked plenty of others in between. If I had to really be honest, the real reason I kept coming back to Trix, was that I was waiting for Chloe to be ready, or for me to be ready for her. No other girl had ever made me want her, not like this. I felt like she was born just for me and it was my job on this planet to take care of her.
Baby’s juices were streaming over my fingers, her breath was coming in short little gulps, I felt the clutch of her walls grab me like she was hanging onto my probing finger for life itself. I gave it everything she needed, my hand making circles in time with my slick finger pulsing in and out. She was close, I could feel it like a magnetic pulse that flowed between us.
“Mmmm . . .” She moaned, her hips cocked and her opening gushed all over my hand.
“That’s Daddy’s girl . . . cum baby . . .”
I knew it was all she needed, to hear me whisper that magic in her ear.
Her tiny hand fell low under the table to dig her nails into my wrist as I worked up under her skirt, her mouth opening and the most beautiful noises fell from her candy sweet lips. Feeling those little convulsions and the river of juice that come out of her almost made me fucking jizz in my pants.
There wasn’t anything I had been through, even during hell week, even all the missions that had left us running for our lives in Afghanistan, that trumped the kind of control I had to show right now over my own desire.
“Oh my god . . .” Her face dropped. Long, shimmering waves of her dark chestnut hair fell over her pink cheeks, and she shook and came all over my hand.
I gave her a second to gather herself, then I slowly slipped my dripping hand out from inside those sweet white panties. I could smell her on my fingers and I knew I had to take a break to spread that sweet slippery juice over my own granite rod in the men’s room and give myself some relief or the rest of this shit evening was going to be hell.
“I’ll be back babygirl.” I gave her a quick peck on the cheek making sure those fucks that call themselves family weren’t looking.
Her hand reached up to grab my wrist, those wide eyes had nothing on a baby doe and my heart seized up in my chest.
“Don’t go.”
“Baby, I have to, I just need a minute. Don’t move, I’ll be back and we’re going to light this shit up tonight. Okay?
Don’t move
.”
I looked down at her from under my brow. She didn’t always listen and we needed to work on that, but for now, I just needed to her mind this one thing while I took a minute to stroke her effect on me into some tissue in the bathroom.
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Chapter One
If she woke, she would scream, and Flynn would be dead.
Still, the only thing he could think of was how he wished he could touch her hair.
Even in the darkness he knew the color of that hair, with its waves and curls the color of a bright copper penny. One mile long spiral tumbled across the sky blue and white lace of the pillow cover, falling almost to the tips of her fingers where her arm hung like a lazy branch off the edge of the mattress.
He wanted to tangle his fingers in her hair’s softness and pull her face to his.
Behind her closed lids, her eyes could light the midnight sky in a glow of green and gold like a field of fresh grass and wild Daisies. But, she refused to open them, refused to let him see them one last time before he died. So, here he sat, waiting, hoping for just one more look.
Minutes earlier, her unmistakable scent hit him as he’d wiggled and strained to crawl through the window. Her floral sweetness tightened around his throat, reminding him that there was only one soul in this entire fucked up world that existed just for you. Only one.
The oak branch outside her window laughed as it’d held his 235 pounds of trained, fighting muscle thirty feet off the ground. The less-than-solid wood had mocked and squeaked as it held his fate.
The gargantuan century old Tudor that held her prisoner stood in its own grand darkness against the onyx sky. Tired grey clouds covering the sliver of silver moon light which fought to reveal his entry.
Below him, windows cut with diamond-shaped, beveled glass still glowed from the first floor where legions of evil plans were laid for both strangers and family alike.
Inside, shadows moved, stepping then stalling, turning toward the world outside while Flynn felt his warm blood trickle down his bicep—the cut inflicted by a rusty wire that had caught him on the back fence around the historic estate.
Lilly, I’m here. I might die tonight. I don’t give a shit. I’ll die and your face will be the last thing I see. I’ll go knowing I was this close to touching you again. Nothing else in this fucking life matters anymore, so what the fuck do I care. Live. Die. I’m not even sure I know the difference anymore.
Rubbing his hands over his face, Flynn sat in the chair, watching. The dull throbbing from his swollen, purple left eye did not register as pain. Last night’s fight an easy mark, a quick $500 to keep him hidden for another night until he could come here and say goodbye.
Wake up. Wake the hell up so that they can kill me. If they do, I won’t have to look at you for another day. When I die, we die . . . or the beautiful disaster we could have been will die. For one fucking moment, the empty space in my chest felt a beat—a warmth—and now it’s ice again. But, that’s for the best. I was never cut out for this. For you.
Lilly’s eyes moved beneath the thin veil of her lids. Without a hint of surprise, she looked at Flynn as though she’d expected him to be there, her focused glow of green and gold on him like a cheetah deciding which angle of attack would be most efficient.
“I hate you.” She went straight for the kill.
“I know.” Flynn sucked in some air, the sound of her voice weaving a noose around his neck.
Flynn caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over her bed, his face cast in half-shadow by the moon. He looked like a man who had nothing to lose.
“I love you,” Flynn whispered.
“I know.” Lilly’s eyes keened on him, her voice sadly resigned.
“Come with me. Right now, we’ll disappear.”
Flynn knew it was pure folly, but he was about to die, so he let his fantasy take flight in the streaks of moonlight that filled the air between them.
Flynn Dunleavy—the bastard son of the infamous Colin Dunleavy, marked by his mother's hot green eyes and his father’s elegant symmetry of features. He was equal parts lean fighting-thug and Detroit, mob royalty.
“That’s impossible. I’m already invisible. I don’t exist. And soon, you won’t either.” Lilly brushed the tangle of waves and curls off her translucent pink cheeks as she shifted under the stark white bedding and leaned, half sitting, against the pile of pillows at her back.
“Why haven’t you screamed yet?”
“I’m playing with you. Isn’t that why you’re here?” The forced cheerfulness in her voice shining light on the hopelessness it tried to hide. “What made you decide to speak to me? I’ve gotten used to the silent stare. I think I’ve enjoyed wondering what’s been going on inside that head of yours more than actually knowing.”
He watched her hands pull at the covers, then wrap around the lush curve of her waist. He wanted to tell her she was beautiful, to silence the insecurity that told her somehow her glorious soft lines made her less-than.
“It took me a long time to decide what to say is all.”
“It’s been almost a month since you spoke to me.”
“I had a lot to think about.”
Flynn could see the almost imperceptible movement of her pulse just below her jaw. His own blood rushed downward, filling the length under his pants even as he realized that he would die without ever discovering the dream of binding himself to her.
“So, you’re here. All I have to do is scream, and they'll come. It will take them a few seconds to get through the locks, but it won’t be enough time for you to get away. After a month of thinking, do you have anything interesting to say?”
Her eyelashes fluttered. He could see the way the blood flushed and blotched over the swell of her chest. Her hair, an utter mess, only made him want her more. And, the way she looked so fragile yet so fierce told the story of the years that had molded both of them into the broken soldiers of their family duty.
“No.” Flynn choked on the word because he had so much to say, and yet nothing to say.
Come with me, I need you more than air. I’ll carry you through thorns and storms and the highest mountains until they can’t find us. I’ll make love to you until you can’t remember what it was like for us to be apart. I’ll put walls around you, choke with razor wire any fuck who comes near you until the world understands this is a bridge not to be crossed. I’ll taste you until your flavor becomes part of me, root inside you until your belly swells and your smile never leaves your lips. I’ll leave a path of destruction behind us with all the faces of those who made you what you are now . . . who caused your indifference, your heart to forget to beat, lest you feel anything.
“Two poison vials and we could be yet another star-crossed lovers’ tragic story. Only, we never got to be lovers, not really.” Lilly fisted the white sheets in her hands.
It became difficult to take a breath. The word ‘lovers’ coming from her rose-petal pink lips creating in him an entirely new level of need.
“Maybe I don’t scream.” Lilly’s voice turned flat. “Maybe we die together. You snap my neck like you did to that boy, then throw yourself off the tower onto the patio. That would be a fitting end, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.” Flynn locked his gaze with hers, his tension showing in the notch of his eyebrows.
“Could you imagine?” She shrugged. “What a war you could start; it would almost be worth dying for. Our fathers, once united in their pursuit of all things evil and profit-making, turning against each other in mutual blame and hatred. Neither of them able to claim the prize of fortune I hold inside my head. What a tale it would be back in Ireland. We would be legend. Folktales filled with angst and heartbreak, all about us. They would have to embellish, of course. Lovers have to be lovers, after all.”
The gentle lilt of her accent made Flynn think of running away with her, back to the stone cottages and fields of a world far away.
“If you love, you’re lovers.” Flynn looked at the floor, not sure he’d even said the words out loud.
“People like us don’t love. We don’t get happy endings. That’s what you told me the day you picked me up off the front steps. Remember? Colin came out, told the driver to let me carry my own bags, then showed me exactly how
he
would love me. You—as silent as you are now—watching as he split my lip and kissed my forehead. My future husband, the man I thought loved me enough to bring me halfway around the world and make me the happiest girl ever.” Lilly tipped her head and put her hands under her chin like a bad actress.
“You changed my mind.”
Lilly ignored him as she looked at the ceiling, then settled her jaguar-green eyes on his.
“I remember precisely what you said. You helped me up, then told me, ‘Did you plan on Prince Charming, Cinderella? This place ain’t no fucking fairy tale. There’s no love here. Welcome to hell.’ ”
“A lot’s changed since then. I changed. You changed.”
“No, nothing’s changed. You were right, about everything. I’m the princess in the tower, right? My own father abdicating my care to a man with hands and heart as cold as ice. Then, there’s you. What do you want from me? I have nothing for you. What we could have been was exactly what you told me not to believe in. A fairy tale. This is a tragedy. Everyone dies in the end.” Her smile, as dark as the sky, still lit up the room, and Flynn felt his own heart pound against the wall of his chest. He felt sick.